9 Things You May Not Know About Big Rob

Allow me to reintroduce myself, My Name is Big Rob, and my new Radio home in NoCo is on 99.9 The Point every weekday afternoon! For those who know me.. I’ve missed you! I’m so glad to be back on your radio every afternoon while you drive home! For those who don’t know me though, or maybe just want to know about me.. I’ve got 9 days with 9 things you want to know about your buddy, Big Rob, based on questions you’ve submitted!

9.When did I first talk into a microphone as a job? My love for being on a mic came from working at a Roller Rink! Truth! Fun story of my early days so follow along.

My “home rink” was in Thornton, Colorado until 2002. It was called Roller Express and there was nothing more happening back in the mid-’90s than that place on a Friday Night! I was a “regular” as a kid on Saturday & Sunday afternoons but as I got into Middle School, the cool time to go was Friday Nights! The line for this place was always down the side of the building so if you didn’t get there early, sometimes they’d run out of skates. Well, you guessed it, I got inside too late one night and my size was all gone! Luckily, a Saint of a man, my great friend & mentor, Chris Cran, who owned and ran the rink with his dad, the late great David “Perfect” Cran, and their family came to the rescue! He offered to give me a brand new pair of speed skates to keep in exchange for helping them pick up skates and sweep popcorn etc. Shortly after he gave me an official job that eventually led to me being upped to “Session Director” or DJ as most would call it.

I’ll never forget my first time on a mic at Roller Express... It was at one of their famous “All Nighter’s” at 2 am. That night was just the start of where I learned to speak on a mic publicly and entertain crowds. I continued to work at the rink through all of my teen years even after the Cran’s sold to my great friend and another huge mentor to me, Steve Saunders, who is now my neighbor ironically! I truly had some of the best times of my life there and miss it greatly. The original Rink collapsed in the Blizzard of 2002.. Was rebuilt and re-opened about 2 years later but it was never the same as the original rink. It was geared more towards a Sports Arena for Hockey and Indoor Soccer and as hard as we tried, it just never had the same magic. Steve sold it a couple of years after the new building opened and it’s now a high school!

I’ll FOREVER be grateful for my time at Roller Express as that was truly the launch into what would be a now almost 2 decades run in Radio! Had I never cracked a mic at the rink, I’d have never been pushed in the direction I was after High School and you wouldn’t be here reading my awesome articles every day or listening to me on the radio every afternoon!

How exactly did Roller Skating Turn into Radio? That’s #8 on my 9 things about me and I’ll bust out that story tomorrow so don’t forget!